Common practice, when traveling in the back country, is to tune to 146.25 at the top of every hour and monitor for 10 min in case anyone NOT within repeater range needs assistance. If you are the person in trouble you 1st transmit a LiTZ (Long Tone Zero) by holding down the "0" key on the radio's touch tone pad for 3 sec, then announce your call sign and nature of the emergency.

If you are with in repeater range and have an emergency you do the same thing at ANY time, send a Litz followed by your call sign and brief statement of the situation. Kind of like sending a SOS. The Ham radio community is always there to help out.

On a few of the repeaters in CO if you send a Litz it will activate a link directly to the Co State Patrol.